


Hurt

by ordinarylittleme



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief, Mentioned Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 06:20:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12359343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ordinarylittleme/pseuds/ordinarylittleme
Summary: Because grief will never, ever stop hurting.





	Hurt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunset_oasis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunset_oasis/gifts).



Fiona loved Violet.

That is enough for Klaus.

Klaus loved--loves--Violet, and that is enough for Fiona.

It will always be enough.

Violet died and Fiona didn't understand.

She hurt everywhere, especially in a certain place in her chest--her heart. She hadn't realized she still had one.

Klaus hopes this was all a great big joke. (Even though he never liked jokes, was always too serious for them - oh god, how he wished this was a joke.)

He hopes this isn't reality and that she will come back with Happily Ever After and things along those cliche lines that they adored when they were young (because Mommy would read them to them and everything was nice and happy back then).

\- - -

Violet died - (how? _why_?) - and Klaus seethed.

His fingers were raw and gnarled now, calloused and hard and more like a butcher's, a murderer's hands then a young researcher's. He was trying to discover a way to bring his sister Violet back to him, to create some way for this hurt to stop for always. He didn't want to go through with this again.

No, not again. Not after so many times.

He sits in his room, at his little desk, with a fountain pen in his hand and crinkled paper everywhere as he nibbled at the old pen in hand with his hair tied up in a bun, like Violet used to; his dark eyes are glossy and puffy and rimmed with black-and-blue circles and his glasses are filthy, because he hasn't--won't--sleep until she comes back with a smile and an idea for an invention, because he dreams of her and their age-old promises.

("Promise me, Violet. Promise me you will never leave me like they did."

"I won't, Klaus; you're stuck with me forever." This is selfish.

They failed to realize in their adolescent grief and childish ways that you can't promise someone forever.)

He doesn't know whom to blame for this. Olaf is long dead and their enemies are ashes, as are VFD and all they once lived for.

\---

Fiona visits Klaus and Sunny, but mainly she visits Klaus.

Because Klaus has the same lovely smile, the same stubbornness and charisma, the same high-cheek bones and eyes and blood, understands better than Sunny ever can because Sunny is still so young and optimistic and foolish (she's only eight, and that makes it hurt more), she deludes herself while Klaus doesn't try to anymore (Fiona doesn't know that Klaus has been deluding himself for all this time, she won't register that because Fiona just wants to see what she wants to see because reality--life--has already been so terribly, horribly cruel).

Klaus erases that burning ache with his sweet smile, with his intellectual, pleasant conversation, with his cups of warm bitter tea, with the same grief pulsing in their veins.

He loved Violet, and so did Fiona.

And that is enough for them.

\- - -

When Fiona visits it feels like Violet isn't really all that gone, that she's just playing hide-and-seek and will pop up any second.

Fiona reads in the crooks of what was their--Violet and Klaus and Sunny's--small home, by the window with plenty of light and he looks so like Violet like this. His comforting presence makes her feel like Violet isn't actually dead, that she is alive and breathing and there.

Klaus presses his lips - _so soft, so chapped, so damaged_ \- to Fiona's one day, not really thinking of it (Violet), and her sharp fingernails sunk into the skin of his upper-arms and Fiona closed her eyes and reciprocated.

The ache stops hurting--just a little bit.


End file.
